My challenge for 2015: try something new every day for a whole year.

Day 178 – saline dancing

There was a little festival going on near the place where my friend lives. It’s a meeting of people from various towns of the same name that’s been hosted in one of them every other year since the Seventies (what a lovely idea).
They had the obligatory beer tent (this is Germany, no event can live without a beer tent) and various events over the weekend. Today’s highlight was a traditional music, dance and shooting show by the Haller Sieder. Like so many things in Europe, this goes back to the salt trade (Sieder being the German word for salter). There are clubs practicing the old traditions to this day and we were lucky enough to witness one of their shows today.

There was a lot of drumming and brass music, throwing of drumsticks and marching. Then there was circle dancing and finally gunshots and.even a cannon shot! I’d never heard – or should I say felt – a real cannon being fired. It was pretty scary to feel the pressure. I couldn’t help but wonder how terrible it must have felt way back when, standing on a battlefield surrounded by this. Anybow, it was just a salute today so I got over my gloomy thought and just enjoyed the colourful traditional clothes and the lovely atmosphere.

It’s funny how the traditional Bavarian dress is known all over the world (thanks to Oktoberfest) but then there are so many other traditional outfits that nobody knows about. I hope you enjoy my pictures of today’s colourful event as much as I enjoyed the actual thing. And if you ever do get to Schwäbisch Hall, try and catch as show of the Sieder.